The Uberization of Drug Trafficking

Drug trafficking no longer depends exclusively on large organizations: technology has enabled a decentralized model in which small actors can produce, dilute, and sell drugs following the logic of platform economies.

The third transformation of drug trafficking through precarity and technology.

A cheap blender, two or three cell phones, some baking soda, crushed painkillers, and a few grams of cocaine inside a suburban house in San Martín, Bristol, or Ponticelli reveal far more about contemporary drug trafficking trends than jungles, mansions, or luxury cars. The image that best represents today’s narcotics trade lies hundreds of kilometers away from Colombia, Mexico, Afghanistan, or Myanmar—the countries traditionally labeled as producers.

Modern drug trafficking increasingly resembles the work of Noahs, Martins, or Pieters rather than Pablos, Joaquíns, or Menchos. In the 1980s, anyone seeking to control the drug market needed to dominate hundreds of hectares planted with marijuana, coca, or poppy crops and operate massive laboratories capable of producing tons of cocaine or heroin. By the mid-1990s, however, the requirements had changed: success depended on flexibility and the ability to adapt operations to shifting market demand.

Synthetic drugs such as amphetamines, methamphetamines, and ecstasy accelerated this transformation, moving production away from rigid and centralized Fordist structures toward dynamic and decentralized systems resembling Toyotism. Over time—and with technological advancement—these production methods were applied even to traditionally Fordist drugs such as cocaine, opioids, and marijuana.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the same urban and suburban areas where synthetic drugs were already being produced, traffickers began installing laboratories designed to further reduce costs while increasing added value. Marijuana cultivation, for example, can now be industrialized almost anywhere in the world. Through genetic seed selection, artificial lighting, heating, and irrigation systems, traffickers can produce precisely the quantity demanded by local markets without importing supplies from distant regions.

Judicial investigations show that cocaine and opioid production has followed a similar path. Laboratories are increasingly established close to major consumer markets, where traffickers import semi-processed raw materials—such as coca paste or fentanyl precursors—and complete production locally, minimizing transportation costs while maximizing profit margins.

Technological innovation and scientific knowledge circulating across different layers of the internet have allowed this flexible and geographically dispersed system of drug manufacturing and distribution to incorporate mechanisms characteristic of platform economies.

Entrepreneurs or Disposable Workers

At the retail level, technology has enabled the social and geographic capillarization of narcotics networks, turning virtually anyone into either an aspiring small-scale trafficker or a reluctant dealer operating under constant fear of arrest.

Internet access, advances in mobile technology, encrypted messaging applications, and alternative digital payment systems have expanded recruitment mechanisms, allowing drug organizations to attract individuals previously unconnected to criminal environments. These developments enable mid-level distributors to reduce permanent staffing while offering “opportunities” to those seeking upward mobility—or simply survival.

In the United Kingdom, this model is known as County Lines, and similar systems have already been detected across multiple regions of the world, including Argentina. The structure combines mobile phones, properties, vulnerable individuals—often subject to coercion or sexual exploitation—and, of course, drugs. Its operation is both simple and sophisticated: distributors receive orders via mobile devices, instruct street-level sellers to collect products at designated locations, and dispatch them to consumers in other cities.

Drugs are frequently stored in abandoned houses or properties occupied by economically vulnerable individuals persuaded—or forced—through violence or necessity. These pickup locations constantly change neighborhoods or cities, complicating investigations.

In Argentina, the system has not yet reached the level of complexity seen in England, but it has shown similar characteristics for several years. Drug trafficking organizations in low-income neighborhoods of major cities such as Rosario, San Martín, and Guaymallén expel homeowners from their properties and use them as more or less permanent storage sites. From the hundreds of houses under their control, drugs are distributed to precarious —though heavily fortified— structures throughout the area, where minors or extremely poor individuals are recruited or coerced into selling them at the retail level.

The widespread use of virtual payment platforms such as Mercado Pago and Ualá, together with delivery and messaging apps like Pedidos Ya and Rappi, allows drug organizations to streamline and decentralize their structures. Drug trafficking is abandoning physical territory and moving toward the conquest of the digital world.

Work Without Contracts, Crime Without Bosses

So-called gig-economy platforms—Uber, Cabify, Rappi, Glovo, among others—have transformed large sectors of the global economy while reviving long-standing philosophical debates. Their founders and political allies argue that platforms merely connect supply and demand, claiming no formal relationship with either party beyond facilitating transactions and collecting commissions.

This position maintains that platform companies bear no contractual responsibility toward users despite extracting significant profits—an obvious oxymoron, given that they claim to do almost nothing while charging substantial fees.

Others argue that platforms effectively direct labor through algorithms. While individuals may supply services and others demand them, it is software that organizes interactions—rewarding, punishing, encouraging, or excluding participants according to behavioral metrics established thousands of kilometers away. The employer becomes intangible, almost ghostlike. Some see participants as entrepreneurs; others recognize precarious workers struggling to survive.

This transformation of labor relations has deeply influenced the narcotics trade. Criminal organizations have adopted platform logic, decentralizing structures and recruiting individuals eager to become “narco entrepreneurs” or simply desperate enough to accept extreme risk. Large permanent memberships are no longer necessary to demonstrate power. Instead, organizations increasingly recruit individuals without criminal records, including minors, whose participation minimizes institutional exposure.

A System Without Visible Masters

Technological innovation reshaped drug trafficking twice: first through the adoption of Fordist production methods in the 1980s, and later through Toyotist flexibility at the turn of the century. Today, amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution, traffickers apply platform-based philosophies to commerce, distribution, and human resource management.

The capillary nature of this new system—and the emergence of workers without visible bosses—poses a growing challenge for states that continue searching for breaking points in individuals rather than in the system itself.

When police raid suburban homes in San Martín, Bristol, or Ponticelli, what they usually find is simple: a cheap blender, a few cell phones, baking soda, crushed pills, and small quantities of cocaine.

The blender breaks.The system does not.